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In 1961, they wheeled a black-and-white TV into my seventh-grade class so we could watch a real American (Alan Shepard, not some commie Russian) go into space, the New Frontier. Today, more than 50 years later in Red Hook, about 50 people, way fewer than those shopping at the nearby
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Fifty years ago, the United States took its first major leap forward in the space race when Alan Shepard launched into orbit. Life.com has a gallery of images of Shepard and his flight here.
On May 6, 196, this story ran in The Wash...

On May 5, 1961, the news media reported that Alan Shepard had become America’s first man in space. He reached an altitude of 115 miles during a 15 minute flight aboard his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule.
Alan Shepard was not the first ma...

This was the scene on May 5, 1961, when Astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. Though his first flight was a brief 15minutes and suborbital, it was the beginning of a long and storied career for Shepa...

May 5th was the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. manned space flight.
The astronaut was Alan Shepard, and it was a huge deal back in 1961 -- the Russians had beaten the U.S. with the first satellite in 1957, and again with the fir...

Fifty years ago today, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, getting there 23 days after Yuri Gagarin.
Shepard launched at 9:34 AM on May 5, 1961 from Cape Canaveral and landed fifteen minutes later.
Here's...